The Three Doctors
by PadawanMage
Summary: What if the 9th Doctor survived the regeneration process, and how surprised would he be to see two of his predecessors there to take him away on a journey? Takes place immediately after 'The Parting of the Ways'. Read and Review!


**Title:** "The Three Doctors"

**Spoilers**: Up to and including 'The Parting of the Ways'.

**Summary:** What if the 9th Doctor survived the regeneration process, and how surprised would he be to see two of his predecessors there to take him away on a journey? Takes place immediately after 'The Parting of the Ways'.

**Author's Notes:** Apologies if this is a little late, but I've been a little bit of a writing slump. I really liked Christopher Eccleston's Doctor and was surprised and saddened by his doing only one season. I am going to give the new Doctor a chance, but I wanted to write a sort of 'going away' story for Doctor Number 9. I did have this after watching the 'Five Doctors' DVD, so I figured, what if he survived the regeneration process? If the TARDIS is as powerful as to take down a Dalek fleet, she can probably do a lot of other stuff. I only did two other Doctor's since it would be fair to say the Original would be there and before Doctor Number 9, I liked Tom Baker's above all the others.

This story hasn't been beta read, but I hope it's still enjoyable enough for feedback.

As with all my other stories, I hope this makes sense.

Enjoy!

* * *

"Do you think he'll be all right?"

"Oh, I think so. We've always been made of sterner stuff, you know."

"I certainly hope so, my boy, but still – to take on all the power of the temporal vortex?"

The Doctor moaned softly and tried opening his eyes, but quickly shut them again from the glare around him. Regenerations were notorious for being difficult, but never quite like this. Then again, his previous selves never had to contend with absorbing all the energy from the TARDIS and channeling it back. He vaguely wondered what he'd look like now.

Slowly the Doctor rubbed his temples to try and alleviate the migraine he was currently experiencing. When it receded to tolerable levels, he tried to get up but a gentle yet firm hand pushed him back.

"Rest easy, son," a kind, dignified voice said. "You've had a busy day."

"Very true, you know. You've done a man's job – couldn't have done better myself," another, slightly deeper voice affirmed.

The Doctor's eyes snapped open at the two voices. As far as he knew, Jack had still been left behind on Station Five. Neither voice even sounded like Rose's, however they both sounded disturbingly familiar. But that was impossible - he must've been hearing things. Slowly, hesitantly, he tried to adjust to the blurred shapes before him. As the faces gained more definition, not to mention recognition, the Doctor began to feel a thoroughly unshakeable, but not unprecedented, bad feeling about this.

One face belonged to a very old man with a head full of white, almost silver hair. Although face lined with fine wrinkles, it was the man's eyes still showed a youthful vigor. Dressed in what looked like Elizabethan-style dark clothes, and sporting a black cane, the grandfatherly man looked down at the Doctor in guarded concern. The second face, on the other side from where the Doctor lay, had an amused, if manic, look to him. With a mop of curly brown hair and a smile full of teeth that would not quit, the man wore Bohemian clothing.

The Doctor's suspicions were finally confirmed when his eyes took in a rather long and multi-colored scarf around the man's neck and piled close by. He groaned.

"Wonderful – not only have I regenerated, but now I've become schizophrenic as well."

"Is that any way to address your rescuers?" The older man huffed and glanced at his companion. "What did I tell you? You would think that someone of my age would garner more respect than this."

The other man merely shrugged. "Were the rest of us any different?"

"Excuse me?" the Doctor cut in. "Besides the obvious 'breaking the first rule of Time Lords', could someone please explain why my first and forth regenerations are now here in front of me?"

"In the first case, young man," the older gentlemen started petulantly, "_I_ am the original Doctor, he," - a nod towards his curly-haired fellow – "is _my_ forth regeneration and _you_ are the ninth."

"Was I truly this cranky?" the Doctor murmured but then frowned. _Ninth?_ Slowly, he raised his head and looked over at the main TARDIS console. There was Rose, just as he left her, standing next to the console. But standing next to her, wearing _his_ leather jacket and _his_ pants…was him. Or rather, Number Ten.

He brought a hand up and touched his nose, face, his hair – he even had the same clothes. Everything was as he remembered it…that was the most disconcerting thing of all.

Seeing confusion in the Doctor's face, Number Four gently helped him to his feet. As he straightened himself out, the Doctor looked from one to the other.

"I'm going to proceed with the assumption the temporal vortex didn't completely melt my brain. So, what the hell is going on? Why am I still – me? Why are you here and why can't Rose see me?" He gestured at his companion who looked somewhat perplexed at whom she was talking to, rather than was going on several feet away.

"Here, you tell him," the Original Doctor gestured with his cane towards Number Four, who was about to talk when he noticed how green around the gills the Doctor looked.

"Headache?" he asked. The Doctor nodded. A small paper bag appeared, opened and offered. Still looking at Rose, the Doctor reached in, grabbed something and popped it into his mouth. Before the jellied confectionary melted completely in his mouth, his uneasy queasiness faded away.

"Thank you," the Doctor muttered, while reaching for another.

"Now then," The Fourth Doctor said. "The simplest way to explain everything is to say that the reason we are here is due in large part to your actions."

The Doctor blinked. "What?"

"Have you forgotten what the Time Vortex does when it looks into you? It grants your greatest desire. Your companion's was to come back and save you at all cost. You acted as a conduit when you took back the energy – in a very suave manner, I might say – and channeled it back into the TARDIS. But before it completely left you, it set in motion events that helped to ensure what you wanted most could come true."

The Doctor frowned. His greatest wish? At the time it was simply to save Rose, but, looking deeper, he knew it had to be something that truly touched him.

"The Time War," he said quietly.

"If some Daleks could survive something of that magnitude, why couldn't some of the Time Lords?" the Original Doctor commented.

"But I would've felt it!" the Doctor said through clenched teeth.

"Smack dab of the greatest destruction that annihilated the combined fleets of both the Dalek race as well as our own people?" the Fourth Doctor asked. "Did you think you were able to escape that holocaust unscathed?"

The Doctor's face fell. "You – you think I…cut myself off from the rest of our people?"

The Original Doctor came up and gripped his ninth incarnation in the arm. "If Gallifrey and the rest of our people hadn't been sacrificed, then the Daleks would've gone on to enslave the universe. But even now, even after all you've done after that terrible tragedy, you still carry an overwhelming amount of guilt. You've done your best to try and help those caught in the aftermath of the war, but deep down you still think it's not enough." He smiled sadly. "You may not believe this, my boy, but I hold no malice for what you had to do."

The Doctor blinked a few times and looked away. He never told Rose how he really felt – how he never thought he could forgive himself. Ironic that it would take…another version of himself to gain some measure of absolution. There was a slight lifting of the constant weight on his shoulders from the being the only survivor from the war; subtle, but it was there.

"If some of our people did survive, then what does this have to do with you showing up here?" he asked.

The Original Doctor looked thoughtful for a moment, then turned a walked a few paces away, his cane tapping on the ground. "Just prior to my first regeneration, before the actual transformation, I had…well, for lack of a better term, a 'visitation' in my mind by a fantastic being. Terribly beautiful...immensely powerful…and ultimately recognizable."

The Doctor looked from the console and back. "Rose?"

"I did not know it was Rose until I came here, though I did recognize the essence of the TARDIS in her. She…_they _kept my original body intact after the regeneration, however Ben and Polly (my companions at the time) couldn't see me, just as Rose can't see you."

"But why?" the Doctor asked in confusion.

"Because this isn't your life anymore," the Fourth Doctor added, nodding towards the Tenth. "It's his. We don't exist in this part of time, anymore. After my regeneration I watched from a distance away as Adric, Nyssa and Tegan carried my 'new self' back to the TARDIS. The moment they dematerialized, I was surprised to see to see this fellow show up," he said nodding towards the Original.

"The TARDIS," the Original continued, "showed me everything that had happened: the Time War, the destruction of Gallifrey, your travels afterward, all up to just before you were about to regenerate. I also knew that you were the last Time Lord and the TARDIS knew how utterly alone you were. So, I was provided with a means of transportation and entrusted to find every one of my regenerations just prior to _their _regeneration.

"But why – for what purpose?" a confused Doctor asked.

"The TARDIS couldn't tell me that there were survivors from the war, but I had this…_feeling_ they were out there, somewhere, possibly lost in time, or in a hitherto unknown dimension. She knew you would need all the help you could get."

"And who's better than us?" the Fourth Doctor said with a smile.

For the first time in a very long time, a small ray of hope entered the Doctor's guilt-ridden mind. "It's possible? There might be our people out there lost and stuck somewhere in time for us to find? How are we supposed to find them? This TARDIS has a new Doctor."

With a smile, the Original pointed with his cane to a darkened corner where the Doctor made out a large object. He walked over and gaped at what he found.

"Another TARDIS?"

The Original Doctor came up and padded it affectionately. "In all out travels, in every regeneration, we never fully understood that every time we had companions, we always failed to add one to the number." He then sighed and looked around the current TARDIS interior. "Although I must say, I don't like the way you've changed things around here, at all."

"Oh, I don't," the Fourth Doctor chimed in, looking around as well. "I think it has a certain 'nouveau riche' quality to it, don't you think. The Original merely snorted and opened the door to 'his' TARDIS.

"Time to go, my boy. They're all waiting for you, you know."

The Doctor frowned slightly but before he could say anything, the Original disappeared into the TARDIS. He rounded on the Fourth.

" 'All waiting for me'? As in every single one of us inside there?"

"You were the last," the Fourth Doctor said with a wide smile. The Doctor rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"Great. Nine different versions of me all banging around the TARDIS like a bloody pinball machine. It even sounds like a warped version of a reality show." He looked over and caught sight of Rose now sitting on the ground and looking very confused. Sitting next to her, the Tenth Doctor looked like he was trying to explain what happened and comfort her at the same time.

The Doctor looked at his antecedent. "Give me a minute, will you?" The Fourth Doctor caught the look over, nodded and enter the TARDIS as well.

The Doctor walked over until he stood over the new incarnation and Rose. He could feel his hearts tug at the shell-shocked look on Rose's face and he really couldn't blame her. One second she'd been looking at a smiling, joking Doctor, the next, she's looking at a completely different one with the same memories, but not the same one she grew to feel something for.

Similar, yet different.

He felt so guilty at not having told Rose about regenerations – about a lot of things. He'd been so happy just living each day as if it were his last and Rose was more than able to keep up with him. That was why he didn't tell her anything till the very end: there was nothing she could've done, and he really was trying to spare her as much grief as possible.

A sudden irrational streak of jealousy went through the Doctor as he watched his newest incarnation trying to comfort Rose. However, the others did have a point: he now had a higher calling. He was more or less responsible for what had happened to his people and his world, so if an opportunity arose that allowed him to undo even some of the damage, he couldn't let it slip by.

Still…a not so small part of him would miss Rose terribly: her humor, her kindness, her sheer humanity was something he never quite had with previous companions. And that one, true kiss…they would never be able to explore any of that side of their relationship now, would they? There was one thing he could say with some pride: he did keep his promise to Jackie Tyler by helping Rose in the end. He knew that that knowledge was passed on to this regeneration, but he wanted to at least give some kind of token gesture.

"Take care of Rose for me, do you hear?" the Doctor asked his successor, not really expecting a response. He turned to leave but stopped when he caught the new Doctor…_looking right at him_. He said nothing, but while Rose was looking away, the new Doctor gave his predecessor a small smile (with new teeth?) and a single solemn nod.

The ninth Doctor nodded as well, looked one last time at Rose, knowing in his hearts that she _would_ have a fantastic life, and then slipped into the other TARDIS. The door hadn't even closed before the light at the top started blinking and the blue police box disappeared completely into time and space, leaving the future to its new occupants.

**-FIN-**


End file.
